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‘Of Course’: IDF Drops Case Against Soldiers Accused of Raping Palestinian Prisoner

The Israel Defense Forces on Thursday dismissed the indictments of five soldiers accused of raping a Palestinian prisoner at the notorious Sde Teiman prison in July 2024 – an attack that sparked worldwide outrage.

The IDF spokesperson’s office said the decision to drop the indictments of five reserve members of Force 100 – a special unit of the military police responsible for guarding and controlling high-risk detainees – “was made following an examination of all the considerations, evidence, and relevant circumstances.”

“Among the factors taken into account were the complexity of the evidentiary basis in the case and the implications of the release of the security detainee to the Gaza Strip, which created significant consequences for the evidentiary aspect of the case,” the office added. “These developments created exceptional circumstances that affect the ability to continue the criminal proceedings while preserving the right of the defendants to a fair trial.”

The dismissal of the indictments, according to The Jerusalem Post, does not mean the soldiers have been exonerated.

The five soldiers were caught on video assaulting a Palestinian prisoner at Sde Teiman on July 5, 2024. Although they used riot shields in a bid to conceal the nearly 15-minute attack, medical reports cited in the case show the victim suffered serious rectal injuries requiring surgery, a ruptured bowel, punctured lung, and fractured ribs. An Israeli medical staffer said that the victim arrived at the hospital in critical condition.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – who is wanted by the International Criminal Court in The Hague for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza – welcomed the dismissal of the indictments, which he said had “damaged Israel’s reputation in the world in an unprecedented manner.”

Israeli President Israel Katz raised eyebrows by asserting that “the role of the IDF’s legal system is to protect and safeguard IDF soldiers who engage heroically in war against cruel monsters, and not the rights of the terrorists of Hamas.”

Netanyahu and Katz both called the prosecution of the Sde Teiman reservists a “blood libel.”

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Another Connecticut Climate Plan — Another Charge On Your Bill 

Connecticut lawmakers have a habit of raising taxes by calling them something else. 

The latest example is S.B. 453, a proposal that would impose a five-percent surcharge on certain insurance policies tied to fossil-fuel infrastructure in the state. 

The revenue would flow into a new “climate resilience account.” According to the bill, the fund would support projects such as flood-risk data collection, public awareness efforts in high-risk communities, and grants for infrastructure designed to mitigate flooding. 

On paper, the plan sounds straightforward: apply a surcharge to fossil-fuel infrastructure and use the proceeds for climate-related programs. 

In practice, costs introduced into complex systems rarely stay where they start. 

They move. 

How the Surcharge Works 

The bill applies to insurance policies covering infrastructure involved in the processing, export, or transportation of oil, natural gas, or coal. It specifically references pipelines, refineries, terminals, and utility-scale generation facilities. 

That last category is significant. 

New England continues to rely heavily on natural-gas for electricity generation. When the cost of operating those facilities rises — whether from fuel, regulations, or insurance — those increases do not simply vanish. They are incorporated into wholesale electricity markets, which influence the supply rates paid by customers of utilities like Eversource and United Illuminating. 

A surcharge introduced upstream can work its way, step by step, into ratepayer bills. 

It is also important to note that the surcharge is not imposed directly on fossil-fuel companies themselves. It is added to the insurance policies that cover them. Insurers collect the surcharge and remit it to the state, but the insured entities ultimately bear the cost — and costs in the energy sector tend to ripple outward. 

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Breaking the Nuclear Taboo

President Trump has been on quite a roll. Since just the beginning of the year, he has kidnapped the Venezuela president, threatened to invade Greenland and Colombia, and has in just the last week dragged the U.S. – and seemingly much of the Middle East – into a new war by joining with Israel to attack Iran, something that even the biggest hawks among recent U.S. presidents have managed to avoid. That’s on top of bombing seven countries in 2025.

The 2024 campaign promises of a peace president who will end the forever wars have evaporated, only to be replaced by unrestrained use of military force and a seeming disdain for diplomacy. As the U.S. comedy show Saturday Night Live put it, Trump, along with his UN-replacing Board of Peace, got “bored of peace.”

Breaking international law seems to be a feature, and not a bug, of Trump’s actions, consistent with his admission that he is expressly not guided by international law, norms, traditions, or common decency, but by “My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”

Trump’s power-drunk top advisors are just as out of control. Secretary of War Pete “kill them all” Hegseth stated that his goal is to “unleash overwhelming and punishing violence on the enemy” and to “untie the hands of our warfighters to intimidate, demoralize, hunt, and kill the enemies of our country.” At the Munich Security Conference, Secretary of State “little Marco” Rubio bemoaned the end of the era of colonialism and called for returning to “the West’s age of dominance.” Deputy chief of staff Stephen “Genghis” Miller declared, “We live in a world… that is governed by force, that is governed by power.”

In addition to hegemonic actions in the conventional military realm, Trump has been escalating when it comes to nuclear weapons. He rejected President Putin’s invitation to extend the New START treaty for another year, making possible an unconstrained nuclear arms race alongside an ongoing modernization race. He has also announced that the U.S. will resume nuclear testing. Even without the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East and tensions with China, these actions and threats would be destabilizing and dangerous.

Trump is the mean and out-of-control bully on the global playground. Except that this bully has the sole authority to launch thousands of nuclear warheads.

It would be the ultimate expression of Trump’s unbounded power for him to break the one remaining international taboo – which, despite far too many close calls, has persisted for more than 80 years – detonating a nuclear weapon. There are many indications that, despite the U.S. and Israel’s ability to bomb Iran at will, this war may not be going well for them. But that need not be the pretext for using a nuclear weapon. In Trump’s mind, the more unprovoked, outrageous, and unnecessary something is, the better. Given his fragile ego and rapidly deteriorating mental powers – going off on bizarre rants about poisonous snakes in Peru or the White House drapes – the more unhinged he is, the more he thinks it demonstrates his dominance.

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Exposed: Ilhan Omar’s Ties to Sister’s Minneapolis Health Clinic, Somali Health Company, and Alleged Brother-Husband

Rep. Ilhan Omar’s (D-MN) web of shady family ties goes even deeper than her alleged marriage to her brother — reportedly using her political offices to secure millions of dollars for a Minneapolis health clinic operated by her sister, who is married to a top Somali government official.

Omar’s elder sister, Sahra Noor, states on her LinkedIn profile that she was the CEO of People’s Center Clinics & Services from July 2014 to April 2018. In January 2017, Omar began her two-year term as a member of the Minnesota House of Representatives. 

People’s Center is in the Minneapolis neighborhood of Cedar-Riverside, nicknamed “Little Mogadishu” for its high Somali migrant population, many of whom do not speak English.

The 2017 capital budget approved by the state legislature included $2.2 million for the clinic, which operates as a nonprofit that has received $33 million in Health and Human Services (HHS) grants since 2002. 

While People’s Center has an active contract pharmacy agreement for HHS’s 340B Drug Pricing Program with “Degdeg’s Carepoint Pharmacy,” signed by Noor in 2015, the pharmacy lost its license in 2017 and is listed as “permanently closed” on Google Maps. 

Omar boasted about getting the $2.2 million for the clinic that was being run by her sister at the time, celebrating the renovations it completed in 2022 along with Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey (D), state Sen. Omar Fateh (D-MN), and other Democrats.

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Live Nation employees bragged about overcharging ‘stupid’ fans: ‘Robbing them blind, baby’

Two Live Nation employees bragged about slapping customers with exorbitant fees at the entertainment giant’s venues, saying “these people are so stupid” that “I almost feel bad taking advantage of them,” according to court documents released late Wednesday.

Live Nation – which owns Ticketmaster, the company accused of gouging ticket prices for Taylor Swift fans and other concertgoers – earlier this week reached a surprise settlement with the Justice Department, though several state attorneys general are still pursuing legal action.

In a series of Slack messages from 2021 through 2023, Ben Baker and Jeff Weinhold – then regional directors of ticketing – gloated about hiking “ancillary fees” for parking and VIP packages to sky-high levels, court exhibits showed.

Messages showed Weinhold boasting about charging $250 for VIP parking at a Virginia venue and Baker gleefully recounting charging “$50 to park in the grass” and “$60 for closer grass” at another venue.

“These people are so stupid,” Baker wrote. “I almost feel bad taking advantage of them.”

In a conversation from 2022, the pair discussed the annual growth of “premier parking” at an unspecified venue, which hit $660,000 in 2021, according to a financial table in the chat.

“Robbing them blind, baby,” Baker wrote. “That’s how we do.” 

Later in that same Slack channel, the pair discussed base prices for seats at shows, and Baker wrote, “I gouge them on ancil prices to make up for it.”

Live Nation sought to distance itself from the outrageous remarks.

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British tourist, 60, ‘who filmed Iranian missiles’ in Dubai is facing two years in prison after being charged with cybercrime offence

A British tourist arrested after allegedly filming missiles hitting Dubai is facing two years in prison after being charged with a cybercrime. 

The 60-year-old Londoner, who was detained on Monday night, is said to have deleted the video immediately when asked. He insists he did not mean to break the law.

However, he has been charged alongside 20 others over videos and social media posts relating to recent Iranian missile strikes on the UAE, according to campaign group Detained in Dubai. 

The official allegation relates to ‘broadcasting, publishing, republishing or circulating rumours or provocative propaganda that could disturb public security’. The offence carries a maximum sentence of two years in prison. 

Dubai’s government heavily polices social media and responded to the outbreak of war by threatening jail against anyone sharing information that ‘results in inciting panic among people’.

Videos of drone and missile strikes were regularly shared on social media in the early days of the conflict, but these have largely disappeared and been replaced by a deluge of posts praising Dubai’s government. 

Once a tax-free haven attracting influencers from across the globe and thousands of Brits seeking warm weather and crime free streets, Dubai’s carefully crafted image has been shattered and some residents believe it is ‘finished’. 

The emirate, home to around 240,000 British expats including Rio and Kate Ferdinand, Luisa Zissman and Petra Ecclestone, has been targeted by constant Iranian missile and drone attacks as the regime strikes US allies in the Middle East. 

Dubai was hit by a fresh wave of drone attacks today, with a fire breaking out at a hotel in Creek Harbour in the early hours of the morning. Around noon, a building on the Sheikh Zayed Road was hit followed by a further incident in the Al Bada district. 

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Harris for Peace? Neocons Exist on BOTH Sides

The Democrats are taking to the media to declare that war could have been prevented has Kamala Harris won the election. That narrative is convenient politically, but it ignores what the politicians themselves actually said. The desire for confrontation with Iran has existed on both sides of the political spectrum for decades. The problem is not simply one president or one party. The problem is the bipartisan foreign policy establishment that has long treated Iran as the central strategic enemy in the Middle East. The neocons exist on both sides.

During the 2024 campaign, Kamala Harris herself made the position very clear. When asked which country she considered the United States’ greatest adversary, she replied that the answer was “Iran.” That statement alone shows how deeply the Iran war narrative had already taken hold in Washington. Once a country is publicly framed as the primary adversary, the policy direction becomes predictable. Sanctions escalate, proxy conflicts expand, and eventually military confrontation becomes increasingly likely.

Yet now many of the same politicians who previously described Iran as America’s top enemy are suddenly condemning the war. Harris has recently criticized the Trump administration’s actions toward Iran, arguing against the escalation of the conflict. The shift in tone is typical Washington politics. When out of power, politicians oppose the war. When in power, the same establishment often supports it. “Let me be clear,” Harris wrote in a statement shared on the social platform X. “I am opposed to a regime-change war in Iran, and our troops are being put in harm’s way for the sake of Trump’s war of choice.”

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Husband behind $14M COVID loan scam bought mansion for another wife he had in the Middle East

An Illinois tax preparer who helped run a “staggering” $14 million COVID scam used the money to build a mansion for a wife and kids he had in the Palestinian territories — infuriating his other wife in Illinois.

Sharhabeel Shreiteh, 46, received around $740,000 in kickbacks as he helped more than 1,000 people get phony Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans in what he admitted to one sidekick was likely the “most stupid fraud in history.”

Shreiteh used his own ill-gotten gains to build a home and a luxury Mercedes car for his wife and their three kids in Palestine — sending his American-based wife of nearly 18 years into a jealous rage, the Chicago Tribune reported.

“You suck!” Hania Atiq Shreiteh, his 52-year-old wife in America, texted him in July 2021 about the money he was sending to his family in his native Palestine.

“I bust my a– for 13 years and don’t have like she gets without working for it!!!” she wrote, according to messages in court filings.

“You gave her kids, a villa, now fancy cars??!! … I’m so sick and tired of being lied to by you.”

Shreiteh and Hania were married in 2008 and have a daughter in suburban Chicago. It was not clear when he married the other woman in Palestine, with whom he has three children and talked to every day, nor if they are still married.

However, Hania’s anger appeared to have subsided by the time the taxpayer pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 10 years in prison on Tuesday.

“Having a second family aligns with his religious beliefs and was approved by his wife,” a court memo seeking a lighter sentence claimed. “He hopes that once the situation in the Middle East stabilizes, his other family can visit him here.”

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The War on Iran Is Dumb. Here’s Why.

War with Iran is being sold as “strategy,” but it looks a lot like habit. A familiar pattern repeats: vague objectives, elastic legal theories, and a confident promise that the costs will be contained. Then the bill arrives anyway, in blood, money, and credibility.

In this round, the costs are already visible in the most predictable place: energy. Fighting that threatens traffic through the Strait of Hormuz does not just “hurt the other side.” It shakes a chokepoint that, in 2024, carried about 20 million barrels per day of oil, roughly 20% of global petroleum liquids consumption. Markets do not care about speeches. They price risk, and they pass it along to households and firms.

Calling this “a small price” is not analysis. It is marketing. Economies, including America’s, still operate inside a global price system for energy and shipping, and officials themselves acknowledge the conflict has pushed energy markets and prices higher.

The China excuse is bad strategy and worse economics

One of the more fashionable rationales for attacking Iran is the “China angle”: Iran trades with China, so breaking Iran breaks China. This is the kind of logic that sounds plausible until you compare it to reality.

Start with the basic arithmetic. U.S. goods and services trade with China totaled about $658.9 billion in 2024, according to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative. That is not a footnote. It is a structural feature of the world economy. When two economies are connected at that scale, “hurting” one is not a neat chess move. It is self-inflicted collateral damage.

The International Monetary Fund has spent years warning about what happens when states turn economic integration into a weapon. In its words, greater trade restrictions “could reduce global economic output by as much as 7 percent” over the long run. That is not a slogan. It is a forecast about costs that do not vanish because a strategist wants them to.

Now add the Iran-specific detail that is supposed to make the “China angle” sound clever. China does buy large volumes of Iranian crude; much of it routed through sanctions-evasion channels. The Columbia Center on Global Energy Policy estimates that China imported about 1.38 million barrels per day of crude from Iran in 2025, around 12% of China’s total crude imports, and that China purchases about 90% of Iran’s oil exports.

But if your plan is to use war to interrupt an adversary’s energy supply, you have chosen the most globally contagious lever imaginable. The same chokepoint logic that supposedly pinches Beijing also squeezes everyone else. When shipping slows, insurance premiums jump, freight rates rise, and oil prices move. That is not a “China problem.” It is a world problem.

There is another flaw, even more basic. Treating China as the villain for “hedging” against U.S. power is rich coming from a government that has used economic sanctions and financial restrictions as routine tools of statecraft for decades. Great powers teach others how to behave. If the lesson is that supply chains are weapons, do not be surprised when other countries build armor, stockpiles, and alternative routes.

The nuclear lesson: if you want fewer bombs, stop rewarding them

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Caught in Broad Daylight: Ballot Initiative Signature-Gatherers in California Paying For Signatures – Backed by Billionaire PAC

On Monday, street videographer JJ Smith captured on camera what appears to be election crimes in San Francisco, California.  In broad daylight.

The video shows a line of people at the corner of 6th Street and Mission Street in the SoMa neighborhood, soliciting signatures on Monday afternoon.

The clip begins with Smith walking up on the line with a sign that reads, “Can you read & Write?  Sign Petition for $5.”

Smith asks a man in the line, “What’s the line for?”  He responds that they’re “giving five bucks to sign a petition.”

When Smith asks the two women seated at the table, “I get $5 too?”  She replies, “Yeah.”

“What is it?” he asks.

The woman responds, “Just sign it.”

The woman can then be seen highlighting a paper for another woman in the line but off camera.

“First name is going to be Carol, last name Sanderson.  This is the address right here.  This is the city, Avila Beach, and this is the zip code,” she tells the woman.  As the woman takes the paper and pen to sign it, the worker says, “So remember, first name is ‘Carol’”.

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